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Weekend wandering around London.

Here’s a few of the pictures I snapped during our weekend trip down into the capital.

Our itinerary was left pretty much blank, apart from the tickets we’d booked for the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum.

The exhibition shows a glimpse everyday life in Pompeii and Herculaneum before and after the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius. As you weave your way around the beautiful artefacts surviving the intense heat and time itself, its a sombre affair when you reach the latter part of the exhibition and the casts of the bodies that were frozen in flash of fire.

However….those folk sure had a good sense of humour!

I say!

We could easily spend the entire weekend in the museums, there’s so much to see! Cursties favourite area has always been the Egyptian exhibitions and in particular the mummies on display.

I’m pretty sure this one moved a bit….wait…..it might do it again.

Part of the museums glass roof.

Back outside and into glorious sunshine, we headed towards Picadilly to watch the crowd go buy, browsed the shops and stalls around Covent Garden & Burlington Arcade before heading off to St James Park and to rest in the shade of the oak trees.

Sensory overload – every little avenue and backstreet explored often revealed a surprise or two.

I wonder if she’s given them the day off?

As we made our way back east via the underground, we stopped by Westminster rammed with tourist, the sheer buzz of activity astounding.

As we headed up and over Westminster Bridge towards Big Ben, the crowds along the right hand side had intensified into clusters of groups spanning the entire length of the bridge. As it turned out, at the centre of the waving, shouting and jostling were a string of folk operating illegal shells games…you know, the one with the three cups and a ball, mix them around and guess where the ball is. There was certainly a lot of money been exchanged between ringers, players and losers, although a little sad to see a group of pick pockets going to work on the otherwise engaged crowd though, I guess every big city has them. What was fun to see though was the speed in which game pieces, money and dealers disappeared in a sort of domino effect as a police car slowly cruised across the bridge.

Our next day was a pretty much a repeat of the previous day including a visit to the Victoria and Albert museum and plenty of shopping in Fortnum and Masons and Harrods. Here I sampled some of the latest DSLR cameras from Nikon, mused over a £140 wooden case for my iPhone (i soon came to my senses) and stood jaw gaping at demonstrations of the new OLED TV’s they had on display. The image clarity was so good it felt like you could simple reach out and grab the object on screen. One of these has to be mine one day!

VA Museum glass balloons.

During out travels around the city, we’d spotted numerous people riding city owned bicycles and the docking stations were you could rent one from. It’s an automated service were you’d insert a few coins to receive print out containing a pin code which you would then enter on one of the docking station to release the bike. There are so many docks around it’s quite possible to cycle to your destination and drop the bike off there without having to return. What a great way to see the city…although being chased down my a London bus might not be so fun.

Weeee…three gears and a bell. Look out London.

The company who Curstie works for has it’s head offices in Canary Wharf, so being a Sunday and probably devoid of people, we took our cycles down there and pretty much had this mini city all to ourselves. Apart from a few aircaft above, it was totally silent, like a set from a disaster movie. In little more that 12 hours later, cycling between the buildings would be a huge mistake.

Messing around with Hipstamatic.

One day I’ll return to Canary Wharf at night with my camera gear.

It should be noted that navigating around the hussle and bussle of of the city, be it on foot, tube or cycle, was made so incredibly easy via the phone app – http://citymapper.com/ Not only did it advise tube stations, lines and platforms to avoid any realtime delays, it also advised cycle routes and dock stations indicating which docks were free or full. Indispensable!

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2 responses to “Weekend wandering around London.”

Interesting different perspective on London. Makes me realise that although I go up there quite often (for work), there’s a side to it that just doesn’t get the time dedicated to it. Less work, more life, I reckon!

It’s difficult to build up any steam i guess when you’re work there though. I used to myself for a short period, spending the weekend there and the weekend home, but so tired I was I just crashed in the hotel in the evening. A shame really.

Less work, more life? Absolutely….and a spot of retro gaming of course!